/tg/Station 13

Made you look, höhö.
Actually add more roles.

Instead of the ubiquitous greyshits, how about each department get's "trainees" to run about and learn (or ignore all work since WEW TIDING) while on the job with basic access to department and same starting equipment. A free slot that unlock higher roles after like 5 hours of play or less, nothing punishing or that feels mandatory pandering towards it.

That way we get more RP inspired things in, nobody loses anything, neater, new job titles and new players are not forced to understand SM or how RD works straight from the bat and get shouted at because of it and you can now wave around a flag "i wish to learn" if you so choose to or abuse it to be unsuspected tator, however you want it.
Neat or no?

Add Grey to the uniforms departmental color to denote this differentiation?

Maybe split the existing slots from these jobs among these new ones?
More flavor, less tide for no raisins since you can now have access to insulos or basic medical equipment if you want to at round start.
And unlike the title says, i don't actually want remove good old grey men from the game, just add more job titles for flavor and arpee if people do wanna use em. And some roles are funnily amusing to have two of like lawyer, why not "paralegal" for lawyer to boot around instead of two of the same?
Others like Scientist there are so many slots for that having techs instead of bloated department seems funny and appropriate to me to make a change.
Sure, it seems bloaty change to make but would add to the life in the station instead of the thirtieth Assistant you run into.

I had a thonk about some names Inputs, "neat" and "no you are stupid" go below this post.

Most departments used to have their own assistants, in the beforetimes
Or maybe that was just on goon
In either case, they were removed for being dumb

Assistants should be changed to Civilians unless you have like a small amount of playtime.

That way if you're feeling nice you can look for people who want to learn how to play the game vs. people who have chosen the role for it's lack of responsibility.

Cobby wrote:Assistants should be changed to Civilians unless you have like a small amount of playtime.

That way if you're feeling nice you can look for people who want to learn how to play the game vs. people who have chosen the role for it's lack of responsibility.

Sure, feels good too.
Mainly i'd want there to be a different role to denote the difference of "i'm doing my own thing as assistant" and "i am actually trying to learn this job" for freedom of choice.
Assistant in department = Tide. That's how it just is.
It'd be nice if we had a role that could be trusted to be in the department without instantly assuming that "shits gonna go missing now".
Maybe I made mine too complex.

Thonking the simplest option codewise;
Add "trainee" option for jobs, same exact thing but ID now says "... trainee", checkbox inside character menu somewhere?
Hilariously (and accurately) your could have Assistant Trainee then if you so chose.

If you want to learn how to play a job, just play the job. If people yell, that's because they're assholes.

MisterPerson wrote:If you want to learn how to play a job, just play the job. If people yell, that's because they're assholes.

Been a while, eh?
Nobody gives two shits about new guys tho, especially if they have A on their ID.
And it's "wikidive while working to get anywhere" not "just play the job" objectively.
If everyone played like you describe, nobody would talk to anyone.
It's a nice thing to have as addition, no? It adds more arpee elements we seem to be pushing towards anyway with minimal effort, helps new players and adds depth.

And at it's simplest I can think off is to have a butten that appends the suffix "Trainee" to job title. That's not terribly hard to add?
I could even do that maybe possibly (never having looked at code of TG) but codebus and some sort of census has gotta agree to it anyway so... \o/

I don't like being a bum so I find a job without a fail even when all my jobs are full. I just beg hop or RD.

If somebody came to me, said "hi, im new, can you teach me how to x" - unless I was very busy - I would let him in and try to get him the role.

Some people though just wanna bum around in maint. That is their perogative and not something bad. Let people enjoy stuff their way.

Step 1: Give assistants departments much like security has.
Step 2: Make assistants use double the amount of time with every interaction (surgery, crafting, batoning cooldown, delay between shots etc)
Step 3: Watch powergamers start maining cargo instead.

Istoprocent1 wrote:Step 1: Give assistants departments much like security has.
Step 2: Make assistants use double the amount of time with every interaction (surgery, crafting, batoning cooldown, delay between shots etc)
Step 3: Watch powergamers start maining cargo instead.

So you only read the title

"And unlike the title says, i don't actually want remove good old grey men from the game, just add more job titles for flavor and arpee if people do wanna use em."

Reeeee wrote:

Istoprocent1 wrote:Step 1: Give assistants departments much like security has.
Step 2: Make assistants use double the amount of time with every interaction (surgery, crafting, batoning cooldown, delay between shots etc)
Step 3: Watch powergamers start maining cargo instead.

So you only read the title

"And unlike the title says, i don't actually want remove good old grey men from the game, just add more job titles for flavor and arpee if people do wanna use em."

Yes, that's how human mind works. Read the bold text and have your mind made up before you even get into it.

That being said there was a suggestion, which is in line with your idea - to not just have generic assistants, but assistants being assigned to specific departments. Also lowkey, do give the assistants debuffs instead of making them go-to jobs and buffing them with maint pump-ups.

make aux tool storage require access or toss everything in the vending machines :omegalol:

I'd be totally down for this. Remove their maint access, and give them basic departmental access and encryption key instead, to one single department. Just like security prefs. Have it random you a department if you didn't choose one. That would make assistants...well, assistants again. Newbies could use it to learn department basics. Veterans could use it as a low-responsibility low-stress job, just like other service department roles. Powergamers who want maint loot would be mad, but fuck em. If you're that burnt out and bored of the game that you have to go on lootquests and make yourself an antag-lite by B&Eing everything in sight, then fuck off. You're burnt out and need a break anyway. Come back in a few months and see how much new shit there'll be to play with.

Doesn't even matter, if you take out maint access at start, you'll instead have them prowling the autolathes for multitools.

I mean, adding an engi-lite role (Maint technician or something) that has the maint access could be a possibility. That way maint access
is restricted to certain people and can be more easily monitored by sec. i don't think it's a good idea, but it's something.

Debuffing them is not a good idea, because people leave their roles sometimes and sometimes only an asisstant can save the day.
let us not mistake "Asisstant" and "Greytider"; the former is not a problem, the latter is when they start griefing and self-antagging.

I cannot count on my fingers the amount of times a person has suggested a code way to remove a role that they had bad experiences with only to get told to fuck off because it is actually very stupid to suggest this. If you have a problem with assistants for example, deal with it on a case by case basis. It's more the person than the role.

1. start as engineering assistant
2. collect free insuls, tools and RCD
3. tide

"And unlike the title says, i don't actually want remove good old grey men from the game, just add more job titles for flavor and arpee if people do wanna use em."


Fine, don't read the OP. Fine.

i like this idea
i don't know how to do a lot of jobs anymore because of how much they've changed over the years and due to the fact i'm lazy and hate trying new things so i don't want to play one in case people are mad (why is one of our two only chemists such a useless cuck) or other players don't want to teach me the meta strats. the wiki is good for the basics but it's often outdated or missing important information or explains the job as the writer wants you to play it and not how people actually do. plus nothing beats having a person you can just ask something specific and get an immediate answer instead of searching or trying to figure it out yourself

Replace them with "off-duty (department)" and they have to work a certain number of hours in that department to earn breaktime

Got me but adding 'more' roles don't mean anything when majority of roles go unfulfilled nonetheless.
This is no diff than jamming in more fun tools to the game but continuing to build jobs with no attributes, traits, or skills system.

Regarding assistants,

instead of removing assistants we can just turn every role into an assistant
security officer assistant
captain assistant
head of personnel assistant